and oh, love is the crooked thing
by piperreynas
Summary: in which both percy and annabeth work for kronos in the first titan war and the fates are cruel. or: dark!percabeth. au/canon deviant. enjoy.


It starts like this: "You're as crazy as Ares."

It doesn't end like it should.

* * *

When Percy is thirteen he explodes his first toilet at a summer camp in the middle of nowhere, and in doing so he unintentionally angers all of the children of Ares. The holographic trident that appears over his head soon after doesn't scare him as much as he thinks it should, but that's been a reccurring theme in his life. He's never done anything he _should_ have. When he gets back to his cabin at the end of the night, he can still see everyone kneeling as blue light washes over their faces if he closes his eyes. _Hail Perseus Jackson_ , Chiron had said, _Son of Poseidon._

Camp Half-Blood is fine, but something's always been off since his mom died. It's not something Chiron or any of the others do, but rather something about him. Percy's been angry a lot- at Gabe, at his father -but this is different. He's angry at _everything_ now, Chiron, Grover, Clarisse, the Stolls.

Luke Castellan, the head of the Hermes trains with him a couple days before the quest. Luke doesn't say _you can do this!_ or tell him that _everything will be fine_ , instead he says, "Don't rely on this to carry you through the next month or so. Two days of basic survival training wouldn't be enough for a week in the woods, much less a quest."

Percy blinks. "Wow, nice pep talk, coach. Way to lift my spirits and-"

"That's not what Chiron asked me to do," Luke snaps, eyes flashing. The moonlight highlights the planes of his face and Percy's gaze catches on the scar that runs over Luke's eye, down to his jaw. "Remember," he says roughly grabbing Percy's shoulder, " _trust your instincts._ " ( _what happened to you?_ he wonders.)

He swears he can hear Luke when he and Grover almost get mauled by a rogue Cyclops, and when they nearly get run over by one of Kronos' satyrs, and when the dryads try to launch an attack on them with a small army of squirrels when Percy nearly starts a flood and somehow creates a small forest fire and...well. Luke's advice saves his life a lot. He goes to say thank you, after they get back, and he gets a sword to the throat and a near death encounter with a scorpion for his trouble.

"I didn't want to do this," Luke begins. His eyes are glazed over and he's staring off into the distance, so he looks more than a little unhinged.

Percy watches him warily, eyeing the sword that hangs loosely from his fingers, then peering at the scorpion that's currently crawling up his thigh.

Luke suddenly fixes his gaze on Percy's hands. "I wouldn't try anything if I was you. I'm the best swordsman this Camp's seen in three centuries. And the scorpion will bite if you so much as move an inch."

"You're as crazy as Ares," Percy spits.

Luke tsks like he's scolding a child. "It doesn't have to be like this. You could join me."

Percy snorts. "You've been watching _way_ too many movies."

"Think about it Percy," Luke says. "What have the Olympians ever done for any of us? Because of them you and I and every other kid in here has a target on our backs but our parents can't even be bothered to let us know who they are. They _abandoned_ us."

Percy meets the scorpion's beady gaze. What does he have to lose anyway? "Alright."

"Alright?"

"I'll join Kronos."

Luke smiles. "Good for you, Perseus." Luke lets the scorpion sting him anyway, lets the water heal him right before he dies.

The first thing Percy does when he wakes up is reach for the nearest trash can. "Why?" he asks in between dry heaves.

"Just a precaution," Luke says absentmindedly, twirling lockpicks in between his fingers and then vanishing them with a flick of the wrist. "So you know exactly what happens if you try to leave." He smiles, pinning Percy with a sharp look and a shark's grin. "You understand, don't you?" It's not stated as a question, so Percy doesn't answer.

* * *

He meets the esteemed Lord Kronos on his fourteenth birthday. Luke takes him into an empty room on the Andromeda and turns off the lights. He learns two things that day. One: Kronos is really creepy, and two: he's not at all prepared for the magnitude of what he's agreed to do.

"Perseus Jackson," Kronos hisses like a swarm of bees speaking collectively. "How nice of you to help us." Percy doesn't say anything. His hands become fists and his jaw clenches as Kronos laughs into his left ear.

Percy knows Kronos doesn't have a body ( _yet_ ) but he swears he sees something move across the room. "Well done, Lucas," Kronos says. The words reverberate around the room. ( _well done, lucas, lucas, s.)_

Luke grins, as the moonlight bounces off the water and hits his face, making the scar under his eye look like it's glowing.

Percy doesn't want to know what Kronos looks like when he's whole.

"What did you think?" Luke asks quietly. He's always quiet and Percy can't help but think of his mom, with her quiet laugh and her quite voice, the gentle strength she had carried for so long. ( _it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for_ , she had said once, winking.)

"He was…" Percy trails off, trying to come up with a suitable word- _terrifying_ , _horrible_ , _awesome_ , "...interesting."

"Lord Kronos is a hard man to please but he is...satisfied with you, and in light of that, I've decided to give you a present. In honor of your promotion." He pulls something out of his pocket, and places it in Percy's hand slowly.

He looks down at the object and then laughs, looking back up at Luke incredulously. "You're kidding right?"

He blinks. "No. I don't kid."

"But…" he looks down again, holds the thing aloft, tries waving it around like it's a lightsabre. "This is a pen, Luke." Luke snorts, then reaches over and carefully uncaps it. Percy stares as it elongates into a three foot sword.

"Ah." He takes the sword from Luke, hefts it is it's hand. "Where did you get it?"

Luke looks at the sword almost fondly. "Stealing the sword was one of the first things Lord Kronos asked me to do. The sword's name is Anklusmos. It's Greek for Riptide." He blinks again. "I'll see you tomorrow morning at six for sparring practice. Having an ancient sword is good for nothing until you learn how to use it."

( _riptide,_ he says, staring down at the blade then leaning against a wall suddenly as a million images flood through his brain at once. _anklusmos.)_

* * *

He meets a girl the next year at Mount Tam. She stands next to Atlas' ruined throne, and later he realizes how ironic that is.

("The stories say mountain was carved from the earth by the gods," a boy tells him with stars in his eyes. Percy's happy that he doesn't know any better.)

She's looking through a pair of binoculars observing the mountain pass when he walks up to her , hands shaking as he shoves them in his pockets. His feet feel like lead and when he tries to talk to her nothing comes out. He doesn't know if the paralyzing fear he feels is a result of his proximity to her or of his proximity to the mountain.

"I'm Percy," he says finally, standing next to her. The top of her head comes up to his nose so it shouldn't seem intimidating when she sizes him up but it does.

She moves away, turning back to her binoculars pointedly. "Good for you," she bites out.

He tries again, awkwardly. "Those are nice some nice binoculars."

She gives you a strange little grin. It's sharp in a way that's strangely appealing. "They're stolen."

"From who?"

"It doesn't matter. I've already stolen them, and no one's come looking for them." She turns to Luke. "Here they come," she says, smirking wider. Percy frowns, peers at the mountain pass and then wishes he hadn't as he sees Campers, walking up the stone path.

Luke grins back and it looks sharp too, but scarily so. Percy looks away as Luke yells, "Fire in the hole!"

Not one of them makes it out.

* * *

Luke makes the girl his sparring partner, a couple weeks later. Percy's not sure why, but he doesn't think he'll ever be able to understand Luke.

She manages to insult his intelligence, put him in a headlock and throw him to the floor in under two minutes without touching a single weapon.

The next three months progress in the same manner, the only difference being that he lasts much longer than two minutes after the first week, until one day he finds the tip of his sword pointing at her chest, and she steps back, with a satisfied gleam in her eyes. "Annabeth."

He blinks. "What?"

She frowns. "That's my name, moron."

He doesn't think it suits her; the name seems too soft for someone as rough-around-the-edges as she is.

* * *

He spends a lot of time with Annabeth that fall, mainly just running errands for Luke. Usually it's _steal that_ and _break into there_ and _get that before the Campers do_. Sometimes he feels a little guilty but most of the time he feels this rush after the job is done and he forget all about the people he hurts as the adrenaline kicks in.

"Don't worry, Perseus," Annabeth says, handing him half of the haul with an ever-present smirk on her face. Sometimes he thinks she gets off on pissing off other people. "It gets better over time."

"You sure?" he asks nervously, turning to look at her.

Her eyes are glazed over when she looks at him, and the expression on her face is captivating, a raw, almost savage euphoria he's never seen on anyone before. She looks breathtaking, like a hurricane, like a tornado.

She turns to him with that same sharp grin, and he's afraid for himself just for a second, afraid that one day he will fall into her sharp teeth and thundercloud eyes and sunlight hair, and he won't be able to make it out. The part of him asks if that would be a bad thing isn't as small as he would like.

"Of course," she says. When she turns and smiles at him, it's softer than it usually is. (Probably a trick of the light.)

Something remains unspoken, but he can't figure out what it is.

* * *

The summer of his sixteenth birthday, Luke decides that he finally wants to really try and revive Kronos. The only way to do that is to find his casket, which happens to rest in a monster-infested death trap. He gets Ariadne's thread from Daedalus himself and drags Percy and Annabeth along with him into a giant maze. Percy hates his plan.

("It'll be great!" Luke tells him over delivery pizza and Kool-Aid. "We can revive Lord Kronos and get rid of everyone at Camp Half-Blood in one go, through the opening into the forest. We kill two birds with one stone."

Annabeth protests, frowning. "If you're referring to Kronos as one of the metaphorical birds, your analogy is incorrect, considering we would be reviving him not killing him. Technically, we'd only be killing one metaphorical bird with the metaphorical stone," she says, looking very pleased with herself.

Percy turns to her dismayed. "That's the only thing you find unsatisfactory about this plan?"

She turns to you with a smirk, lifting her drink in a mocking toast. "Unsatisfactory. Look at you, using big words," she sneers. He snarls back at her, teeth bared. He doesn't notice Luke tilting his head at the two of them curiously.)

* * *

Luke sends them on a weapons run before the enter the Labyrinth. It runs half a day late and they end up having to rent a room at a seedy pay-by-the-hour motel. Together. There is only one bed, which is a fact the clerk conveniently forgets to mention until after they've paid for a night.

He swallows nervously. "I can take the floor."

She snorts, rolling her eyes. "Don't be stupid. We both need sleep. And the bed is the only thing that will mask our scent. We'll use the pillows as a wall."

"Right..." he says tentatively, sitting on the mattress carefully.

"Afraid?" she asks, smirking.

He scoffs. "'Course not." (He's not fooling anyone.)

In the morning he ends up wrapped around her anyway. She shakes him off as soon she wakes, barely a minute after he does, but he can't for the life of him forget how _young_ she looks when she sleeps.

* * *

They enter the maze a day after he and Annabeth return. Annabeth doesn't look at him until the two of them stumble upon the entrance.

One of the campers takes a mortal into the Labyrinth after Chiron somehow figures out what Luke is trying to do. The camper and his mortal meet them in a gladiator arena, fifty feet away from the exit, the casket smack dab in the middle of chimera and dracenae and rogue satyrs and he groans. "I told you this was a terrible plan!" he hisses, drawing his sword.

"We'll be fine," Luke says, sizing up their opponent.

At the same time, Annabeth says, "Shut the hell up, Percy," as she unsheaths her knife. There's a gleam in her eyes that lingers long after she's knocked out both the mortal and your fellow demigod. She leaves them for dead in that arena, surrounded by hellhounds and gods know what else.

He and Annabeth end up stranded in an alley, after. He sees Luke escaping with the coffin and the thread out of the corner of his eye before the Labyrinth shoves him into the passage, so at least one good thing came out of this. Percy takes a beat to look around and he learns that the alley is really a box.

"What do we do now?" Annabeth asks, pacing.

"I guess we just wait."

"Wait? We have to get out of here!" Annabeth says pounding on the walls as if they're not more than a couple inches thick. He's fairly sure she know's it a futile effort, so he doesn't understand why she tries anyway.

"You're the one who thought this was a good plan!" he replies indignantly. "Look where that landed us."

"Shut up, Percy," she responds viciously, starting to pace. He sees her frown and then her lips quiver just a little bit and it clicks for him.

"You're afraid aren't you?" She doesn't respond verbally, choosing to glare instead. He takes that as a yes. "So, the brilliant Annabeth Chase is claustrophobic. How did that happen?"

"It has nothing to do with you," Annabeth mutters. "Just help me find a way out."

He grabs her arm, pulling her into the center of the little room. "Tell me, or I won't help."

"I don't have to do anything," she says, tugging her arm away.

"You do if you want to get out." He says.

"Do you want to get out or not?" she snarls.

"I don't care at this point."

"You should."

"Why?" he says, taunting her. His faces is inches away from each her's and he doesn't know when she got so close, but he doesn't mind at all.

She must not care either, because she kisses him. Hard. When she pulls away, they're both breathing like they've just run a marathon. He opens and closes his mouth like a fish for a few seconds before he says, _"Oh_ ," like he's discovered something.

She looks down, swallowing, and tries to fix her hair.

It takes them an hour to pull themselves together mostly because they know Luke can't know about this. When Luke finds the two of them, they're on opposite sides of the room throwing a ball of water extracted from the clay walls back and forth as he uses his water powers to make sure it doesn't collapse. Annabeth groans disappointedly when he finally breaks the wall down. "Come on, Luke. We were finally having fun here," she whines sarcastically, gesturing to the floating orb.

Percy grins like a shark and lets it collapse. Some of it gets on her face, and he smirks at her as she glares and wipes it off. "Mature, aren't you?" she snarls, standing up quickly.

Luke gives the two of them a mocking look. "Play nice you two," he says, blinking like he's just figured something out.

A week later, he corners her during sparring, pushing her up against a wall and kissing the living daylights out of her, and so that's how that starts.

* * *

On nights when she feels particularly well, she drags him outside for ice cream. He dosn't mind because the ice cream makes her very chatty.

("I wanted to be an architect when I was little," she blurts one night over the chirping crickets, gazing at her small spoon.

She looks different at night. Happier; free. Maybe it's the way the moonlight hits her hair and her eyes, or maybe it's the fact that she's holding his hand, the way that they're together, and there's nothing to do but be with each other. She doesn't look as sharp as she does in the daylight, and he likes it. Soft is a good look on her.

"You wanted to build buildings for a living?" he asks, smiling. "You nerd."

She kicks his foot. "I want to design buildings for a living, there's a difference…" she trails off. He can tell that she wants to say something else, so he wait's for her. "Buildings take a long time to go away if they're built right. People disappear almost every day. I...I wanted to make something permanent."

He ponders that for a moment. "And now?"

"I know there's no such thing."

He takes her hand and laces his finger in between hers, squeezes as if somehow this small measure of comfort will ease the pain of her loss. She gives him a weird look, but she doesn't say anything as she squeezes back lightly and he thinks that it may have helped.)

* * *

It's all great until one of the campers stabs him in the back with a knife shortly after his seventeenth birthday. He doesn't notice immediately because of all the adrenaline in his system but he keels over almost as soon as they find a hotel room.

He wakes up gradually, and it takes a few minutes before he can move. Annabeth is sleeping next to him. She looks so much more peaceful in her sleep than she ever has in real life. She looks fragile, soft, like's made of gossamer thread and glass as opposed to muscle and fire and steel. He thinks that she could've been soft in another life, a life without the gods.

"Hey," he rasps, wincing and reaching for her clumsily as he tries to sit up. She wakes slowly, takes his hand and squeezes drowsily before realizing where they are, why they're here and pushing him back onto his nest of probably stolen blankets with a scowl. "Hey now," he chastises softly. "It's not my fault that imbecile tried to stick me." It sounds more like an apology than a scolding.

"You could have died," she says, fussing with the blankets.

"That's never bothered you before," he says, tilting your head curiously.

"I didn't care before," she mutters.

He grins at her. "Aw, shucks," he drawls.

She narrows her eyes and he hastily makes an effort to look solemn. "I promise I won't actively try to die next time we're out on a mission," he amends.

She nods, then checks her watch. "We need to go. Luke's going to get suspicious if we stay away too long."

"I thought you wanted me to rest though!"

She glances over you. "You'll be fine."

He stares, incredulously. "You do realize I had a knife sticking out of my back a while ago."

"You'll be fine," she says pulling him upright. "There should be a train or something we can catch."

* * *

When they get back into base camp, Luke zeroes in on Percy and Annabeth immediately. The predatory look on his face is not something Percy likes. "And where have you two been?"

"I got stabbed, Luke. Give it a rest," he snaps, going to find his bunk.

Luke stops him with a hand on his arm, gripping so hard that Percy knows it's going to bruise. "My, my, touchy aren't we?"

"Would you like to see the wound then?" Annabeth snarls from behind Percy, crossing her arms. "Tell you what, I'll get stabbed out in the middle of nowhere too and you can see how long it takes to get both of us back to camp."

"Are you defending him?" Luke asks, tilting his head and letting Percy go in favor of Annabeth.

"No, I'm defending myself. I know how angry you get when you think we take too long," she says brazenly. "Where are our bunks?"

"Our bunks?" Luke repeats, grinning knowingly, but not in a good way. Annabeth doesn't say anything. Luke looks between the two of them, blinks slowly, then hands them a map.

As soon as you they're out of earshot, Annabeth says, "We can't do this anymore."

"Annabeth-"

"Just until Luke takes his eye off us. He can use you against me and I don't want that to happen to either of us," she says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear trying to hide her nervousness. The briny air pushes it in front of her eyes again.

"Annabeth-"

" _Percy_ ," she says. "We can't. You know we can't."

He sighs. "Okay," he concedes and trudges up the stairs. Annabeth climbs too.

Annabeth stops him as he reaches the top. He turns to face her, raising an eyebrow. "Promise me you won't do anything stupid. Especially not for me." She says _me_ like it's something disgusting. He doesn't want to, but he nods.

* * *

Luke becomes Kronos' host a month later. Annabeth stands as far away from him as possible in the small room, and she doesn't so much as look at Percy for the hour it takes to complete the elaborate ceremony Luke has planned for after.

The first thing Luke looks at when he opens his bright gold eyes is Annabeth.

Luke talks to Kronos a lot, but because they're sharing a body, it looks like he's talking to himself. Usually Percy doesn't stick aroound to hear their conversations but one day, he's walking past the suite Luke gave himself and he hears them drop Annabeth's name so he stops to listen. (It's reconnaissance, he reasons.)

"...She's been acting strangely lately. Come to think of it, Percy has too."

Kronos laughs coldly. "They lost faith in my plans long ago." He realizes that Kronos is right, he's never really wanted to revive Kronos. He just wanted to stick it to the Olympians.

"What do you want me to do?" Luke asks calmly.

"Do you care about them?" Kronos asks.

Luke frowns, thinking and then reverts back to his usual mask of general disinterest. "I care about whomever you want me to care about," he responds carefully.

"Excellent," Kronos says, smugly. "Then you'll have no problem killing both."

Luke swallows and Percy inhales sharply. He doesn't bother sticking around for Luke's response.

* * *

Annabeth takes so long to answer the door he considers kicking it in. "Percy? What are you doing out here it's the middle of the night-" she says, stifling a yawn.

"We need to go," he says cutting her off. "Get your stuff."

"Why?"

"Do you trust me?" he asks hurriedly.

"I...yes."

"Then pack. I'll explain later."

She studies him for a second, then says, "Okay," and runs into her room and takes a duffle out from underneath a loose floorboard

"How are we going to leave? We're in the middle of the ocean," she asks, looking around.

"I'm a son of Poseidon, remember. I'll just float us out towards a boat and then we can head towards camp."

"Camp?"

"Camp Half-Blood."

She frowns. "What's going on, Percy?"

"I promise I'll tell you everything once we get away," he says. "But right now, we have to leave."

She sighs frustratedly, but nods.

It takes him a while to find an empty boat, so by the time the two of them get to camp it's the middle of the night. They've been running on adrenaline the entire time, and they spent hours talking, so they nearly collapseas soon as they get off the boat and almost get eaten by the harpies. Annabeth manages to drag him to the Big House before he falls asleep in her arms, and he vaguely hears her knocking on the door before he crashes, the excitement of the night finally wearing off.

He wakes up in the infirmary. It takes him a beat to get his bearings, but when he does, he bolts upright immediately, nearly bumping heads (or in his case, locking horns with) Grover. Percy doesn't say anything so he speaks first.

"Why did you do it?"

"Do what?" Percy croaks, looking around. Grover hands him a glass of water and some ambrosia.

"You know what, Percy," Grover says, giving him a look.

"I...," he starts, taking a sip of water. It all seems pathetic now. "I'm sorry. I was just...really angry," he says softly.

"Yeah," Grover says warily, glancing at the Big House. "Who's the girl you brought with?"

He doesn't know whether to be suspicious or not. "Annabeth Chase." He thinks for a moment. "I think you knew her. She said that she came here with Luke and a...Thalia?"

"Oh my gods," Grover says, suddenly going pale.

"Grover?" Percy asks, frowning.

Grover swallows nervously. "I'm going to go see what they're doing," he bleats.

Annabeth comes over with Chiron. Grover won't stop staring at her, and it's clearly pissing her off. "Hey," he says to her, amusedly.

"Hey, yourself." She smiles back and then gives Grover a wary look out of the corner of her eye as she comes to sit next to him on the infirmary bed.

Chiron studies them clinically. "What did you wish to speak to me about?"

"Luke wants to destroy Camp Half-Blood."

Grover scoffs, dismissively. "He's always hated Camp."

Percy shakes his head. "This is different," He insists. "He's actually going through with it now."

"And why exactly are you telling us this?" Chiron asks, carefully.

"...Isn't the fact that everyone here might die reason enough?" Annabeth asks, frowning.

"And why should we trust you?" Grover says warily.

"Because it's in your best interest. The destruction of this camp doesn't affect us at all," Annabeth says imperially, raising her chin.

"Really?" Grover asks quietly, turning to him.

"That's not what she's saying Grover," Percy sighs.

"Really? Because that's what it sounded like," he says, hurt.

Chiron cuts in. "What is it that you know?"

* * *

The cabin counselors make a rudimentary plan with Chiron by the end of the night, after hours of incessant arguing.

Percy takes Annabeth into his cabin despite the rules because her siblings have made it clear they don't trust her. Cabin 3 is empty and dust filled but they manage to semi-effectively clear a mattress before they retire to the bathroom. She kisses him as soon as she comes out of the bathroom, effectively waking him from his sleepy haze.

Both of them are left gasping for air when she leans her forehead against his. Her hand has somehow found its way to his cheek. "I thought we were taking a break," he says, softly.

She looks doen at the threadbare blanket. "I didn't want two weeks ago to be the last time we were with each other," she adds fiddling with a corner of the fabric. She pushes him back onto the mattress gently.

"I'm glad we're here and not dead."

She scoffs, smiling a little. "Go to sleep."

* * *

The next week all of the demigods go up to defend Mount Olympus while the rest join the Hunters of Artemis and the satyrs to fight off the hundreds of monsters all over Manhattan. He and Annabeth, however, go for Luke (Kronos?). It doesn't take them long to find him- he's waiting for them on Zeus' throne. He wonders if this is Kronos' influence or if Luke was always this pretentious.

"Luke," Annabeth breathes.

Kronos knocks her to the ground without raising a finger. "Luke Castellan does not exist anymore. I am Kronos."

Annabeth ignores him. "Luke please I know you can hear me!"

Kronos laughs. "You two are pathetic," he sneers. "But no matter. You'll be dead soon."

Percy tilts his head and smirks mockingly. "I'd give you ten out of ten stars for melodrama, but I'm gonna dock a few on account of you're supposed to be the bad guy here," he say, mustering up a pensive expression. Kronos knocks Percy over too.

"You were my followers, until a week ago. Did you really think you could just walk away from me?" Kronos snarls.

"If you want him, you'll have to go through me," Annabeth says, standing stepping in between you and Kronos.

"That won't be necessary," Kronos says, smiling, not moving an inch from where he sits on the throne. He looks insane. The smile is too wide for his face and his eyes are glazed over, like a junkie's.

Annabeth tries one last time. "Luke!" Kronos growls frustratedly, knocking her down again. "We're a family, remember? You promised." She stands up again, next to Percy this time.

Kronos blinks, and it is Luke who speaks after. "A-Annabeth," Luke murmurs, eyes flashing blue for a minute. His gaze flicks to the blood beading at the corner of her mouth. "You're hurt…"

"I'm okay Luke," Annabeth says, nearly sobbing in relief. "I'm okay. But you have to stop this, okay? You-"

His eyes flash gold again and he snarls. "You foolish children. Luke is dead."

He nods to someone over you shoulder. Annabeth turns quickly, eyes widening, and steps between him and one of Kronos' soldiers, her back pressed to you front. She stills against Percy in shock, and something warm dampens his shirt. She turns around, with an apology spilling from her lips. "No," Percy gasps, reaching for her as she falls and catching her wrist. "Annabeth-" Someone shoves something into his abdomen and he looks down to see the end of a sword jutting from his stomach. He gasps again as they twist and he can't handle the pain, can't think, can't breathe around it-

( _stop stop stop stop-_ )

He collapses, letting Annabeth fall to the floor.

"Percy," Annabeth says, her eyes falling to half-mast. He wants to tell her to stay awake but he barely has enough strength left to take in one last rattling breath.

The last thing he sees is-

* * *

notes: this is easily the longest one-shot i've written so far and it took forever. it is gargantuan, but i'm proud of it and i'd love to know what y'all think, so review, pretty please!

[EDIT: 2/17] this too to rewrite and the ending is still not working for me, but this is all i got for the time being. please r&r because your reviews really do help.


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